Evolution of Negritude in Francophone Literature 1990-2023

Extract

[...] For this, writers affiliated with the traditional Negritude movement and those who innovated it via post-Africanism and post-colonialism cannot detach themselves from Western imperialism because they write in French, and it is this language that makes their literary works renowned. There are those who have already attempted to write in their mother tongue, but their writings do not have the ability to spread throughout the world. Many Francophone writers have perpetuated the black tradition in their writings from 1990 to 2023. The characteristic traits of Negritude are preserved but they do not openly affirm it. [...]

[...] Negritude, also, certainly refers to this color but metaphorized. Without wanting to try to delve into a literary analysis of this excerpt from the Senghorian collection, we can just say that a psychoanalytic approach allows for a better understanding of the writer's true intentions, as one must penetrate his unconscious personality in order to truly grasp his obsession with the use of the term night throughout this poem. Through the Césairean scaffolding and Senghor's reprise of the concept of negritude, we can arrive at proposing elements that are definitory. [...]

[...] The latter manifests the will to bring Africa out of 'many anti-progress invisible patterns of thought and integrated actions in some of our favorite models of self/world interpretation.' The ideal means that this ideology has found is adaptation to modernity, although some formerly colonized Africans express reluctance to fully adhere to the contemporary world due to an inability to accept intercultural cohabitation, a principle of universality. Thus, post-Africanism joins the same ambitions as Negritude in the sense that both wish for an Africa valued and revalued through its common values. The ideology of post-Africanism, considered then as the new Negritude, no longer affects the political framework as the concept was initially. It is rather culturally oriented. [...]

[...] TOWA, M. (1971).Léopold Sédar Senghor: Négritude or Servitude. Yaoundé: CLE. [...]

[...] (2011), From Negritude to Migritude: A Sociological Analysis of Francophone African Literature. Montréal: Doctoral thesis of the University of Québec at Montréal.) Moreover, if we base ourselves on definitions from major French language dictionaries, particularly those provided by the Trésor de la langue française (TLF, 1971-1994), we can grasp that nouns formed with the suffix -itude 'have experienced a certain form of vitality, precisely starting from the term "negritude".' Thus, almost all derived terms in -itude aim to signify in concert affiliation with an ethnic group and a situation of subjugation and subjection. [...]